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Financial Reform

Our report, Shining A Light on Consumer Problems: The Case for Public Access to the CFPB’s Financial Complaints Database, details why it is important that the highly successful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau database of over one million consumer complaints remain open to the public, so consumers, researchers and others can study the financial marketplace.

Today, we sent a letter addressed to all members of the House of Represenatives in opposition to S. 2155, or as we call it, the Bank Lobbyist Act. We are joined by 84 other groups and leaders, representing communities, consumers, servicemember, and workers across the country. In particular, this letter explains how the bill benefits Equifax and the other national credit bureaus at the expense of average consumers and our military servciemembers.

Today, we sent a letter addressed to all members of the House of Represenatives in opposition to S. 2155, or as we call it, the Bank Lobbyist Act. We are joined by 84 other groups and leaders, representing communities, consumers, servicemember, and workers across the country. In particular, this letter explains how the bill benefits Equifax and the other national credit bureaus at the expense of average consumers and our military servciemembers.

This month, Scott Tucker, a payday lender who used his proceeds to fund a LeMans racing team, was sentenced to 16 years in jail on federal racketeering and other charges. Last fall, his former business partner Charles Hallinan, known as the Philadelphia Main Line "godfather" of payday lending, was also convicted of federal racketeering charges. Tucker and Hallinan's main business model? Their claim that their payday loan enterprises were for the benefit of Native American tribal partners and therefore subject to tribal immunity. The authoritative public interest law firm Public Justice speculates: "Tribal Immunity" may no longer be a Get-Out-of-Jail Free Card for payday lenders." It's about time.

With the departure yesterday of director Richard Cordray from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we don't doubt that the President has the authority to nominate a new director of the Bureau. But the President's assertion later that day that he can and would appoint his own temporary or acting director -- at odds with the plain language of two laws -- places the bureau's leadership in crisis.

We've created an interactive map showing all the details of placing credit freezes on your credit report-- where the freeze is free for anyone, where temporary thaws/lifts are free, and where senior citizens, children, other protected classes pay less (or sometimes more). Only previous ID theft victims get freezes for free in every state; that's why we're calling for a new federal free freeze law for everyone else after the Equifax breach.

Here's our statement by Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski regarding the announcement from Equifax that the retirement of the CEO who presided over its massive data breach and "inadequate, maddening" response was not enough to clean up the credit bureaus. Congress also needs to act to provide free credit freezes for all and to force all of the Big 3 credit bureaus to do a better job.

What would you do if you knew that the Big 3 credit bureaus were in the Top 5 of complaint leaders to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and that their mistake-ridden reports caused consumers to either be denied jobs or pay more for or be denied credit due to those mistakes? Well, if you were the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee, you'd consider not one, but two bills to make this worse by eliminating strong consumer protections and eliminating some and limiting other damages payable to consumers when credit bureaus wreck their lives. You'd hide a massive weakening of consumer protections inside a Trojan Horse bill that claims to be about letting the credit bureaus help people.

With the U.S. Department of Education failing to protect students from unfair practices, the states and the District of Columbia have begun to enact student loan servicing protections. Here's an overview of what's happening in the "laboratories of democracy."

As the big Wall Street banks, payday lenders and other opponents of consumer protection intensify pressure on Congress to weaken financial reform and gut the CFPB like a fish, numerous reports of further Wells Fargo malfeasance serve as a warning that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the rest of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act are needed more than ever.